How the Boss brought down the wall

Springsteen may have delivered the most influential concert ever

Hey there, time traveller!This article was published 22/6/2013 (1516 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Who brought down the Berlin Wall? It was Polish trade unionists, Mikhail Gorbachev and his perestroika, Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars program, ordinary East Germans demonstrating in the streets and piling into the West German embassy in Prague, and of course Gºnter Schabowski, the Politburo member who read out that legendary note lifting travel restrictions -- "effective immediately" -- on the night of Nov. 9, 1989.

A new book ventures to add another name to that list -- rock star Bruce Springsteen, who held the biggest concert in the history of East Germany on July 19, 1988, and whose rousing, passionate performance that night lit a spark in the hundreds of thousands of young people who saw him.

NYT

John Tlumacki / The Associated Press archives
A man stands on the Berlin Wall during a rally shortly before its historic dismantling in November, 1989. A new book claims Bruce Springsteen should get some of the credit for bringing the wall down.

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Springsteen attracted an estimated crowd of 300,000 -- the largest he had ever played to. They were hungry for change and freedom, and seeing one of the West's top stars made them even hungrier, argues veteran journalist Erik Kirschbaum in his book Rocking the Wall.

"It's safe to say that pretty much every East German between the ages of about 18 and 35 was either at the Springsteen concert or saw it on TV," said Kirschbaum. "It was an unbelievably intoxicating moment for them -- many of them had never experienced such a mass crowd of people having such a good time before."

Kirschbaum interviewed the organizers, Springsteen's manager Jon Landau and dozens of eyewitnesses who recalled with goosebumps and glowing eyes how their hero came across the Wall to play Born to Run, Badlands and Born in The USA just for them.

Kirschbaum is convinced it was the most politically important rock concert ever held. His book makes a strong case that historians should explore Springsteen's impact in fuelling the revolution. However, if they do, they might also have to devote at least a little attention to the role played by David Hasselhoff, whose poppy single Looking for Freedom was No. 1 in West Germany in the spring of 1989.

The Communist Party's youth arm, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), had invited Springsteen as part of an official drive to placate the country's increasingly restless youth.

In 1987, police wielding truncheons and electric stun guns had beaten back hundreds of East Berliners who had gotten too close to the Wall because they wanted to listen to concerts by David Bowie, Genesis and the Eurythmics being held on the other side in West Berlin, just a few hundred meters away, on a field in front of the Reichstag building. Some of the loudspeakers were pointed east so that East Berliners could hear the music.

During West Berlin gigs by Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson a year later in June 1988, the communist regime deployed thousands of troopers from the Stasi secret police along the Wall to keep fans away.

Grey ranks of armed men confronting youths who only wanted to hear some decent pop music -- to young East Germans, such scenes just rammed home the message that they were locked inside a deeply unfun country.

Recognizing the problem, the FDJ organized concerts by Western bands such as Bob Dylan, Depeche Mode, Bryan Adams and Joe Cocker in late 1987 and 1988 to give people a little of the freedom they were craving. Springsteen was their biggest coup. It was an attempt to release some of the pressure building up in East German society. But it backfired.

"Quite a few people told me they could sense that the Communist Party leaders were losing control and the Springsteen concert was like a last-ditch effort to change it, but it was too little, too late," said Kirschbaum. "Springsteen only made them want more freedom."

Many at the concert said their lives changed on that balmy summer night when the venue, a large field adjoining a cycle racing track in the Weissensee district of the city, was so packed that people couldn't move, and dozens who fainted had to be lifted over heads to ambulance crews.

Honed from childhood to be good Communists, people found themselves waving homemade US flags and singing along to Born In the USA while the authorities looked on in bewilderment.

The concert, said Kirschbaum, helped to convince many thousands of people that change was not only possible but imminent. The book describes what many saw as a profoundly symbolic moment when the East German organizers, overwhelmed by the crowd heading towards them, simply opened the barriers and let everyone in, even those without tickets.

Springsteen, meanwhile, connected with the crowd not just because he was a working-class icon and made great music, but because he played his heart out on stage that night -- unlike Bob Dylan, who had delivered a tepid, uninspiring performance in East Berlin in September 1987.

After playing the first 12 of 32 songs that night, Springsteen stunned the audience with a message he delivered in German.

"I'm not here for or against any government. I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down."

The crowd erupted into a delirious roar. "We all got the message, and it was electrifying," Jrg Beneke, a farmer who drove across East Germany to see the concert, told Kirschbaum.

To ram the message home, Springsteen went on to play his song Chimes of Freedom.

"You couldn't be at that show and not feel that hope for a change," Landau, Springsteen's manager, told Kirschbaum.

"The effect that the speech and then the song Chimes of Freedom had on the audience was spectacular. It was a moment none of us will ever forget. Bruce walked off the stage after the concert, and we said -- you know just personally to each other -- that we had a feeling a big change was coming in East Germany."

SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed Kirschbaum ahead of the launch of the book.

Kirschbaum: I was in a taxi on my way home from a Springsteen concert in Berlin in 2002 -- after writing a story for Reuters about how he criticized Bush for bashing Germany's resistance to invading Iraq -- and the taxi driver couldn't stop talking about the 1988 concert in Weissensee. I had never heard about that '88 concert before. The taxi driver said that '88 concert was biggest, best and most exciting concert ever anywhere and it had the whole GDR shaken up." I started looking into that '88 concert and the more people I talked to who were there, the more plausible that theory became that there may be a connection between it and the fall of the Wall. Some might scoff at the idea that Springsteen's concert helped bring down the Wall. But if you read the book and see what happened there, I bet you'll become a believer in the power of rock 'n' roll.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was it one of the most politically important concerts of all time? How does it measure up against, say Woodstock? Live Aid?

Kirschbaum: Yes, definitely, it was in my mind the most important rock concert ever, anywhere. It amazes me that no one else has ever written about this concert before in the context of the monumental changes that brought down East Germany in 1988 and 1989. As a journalist it was almost too good to be true for me to stumble upon this earth-shaking concert but no one had connected the dots before. There was fortunately quite a bit of material, films, Stasi reports, records and other stuff about the concert available and thousands of witnesses who were happy to talk about it. Woodstock certainly had a profound effect on the United States and the atmosphere in East Berlin can perhaps be compared a bit to Woodstock. But if you look at what happened after the East Berlin concert, I think Springsteen's '88 concert is in a league of its own as the most important rock concert ever anywhere. The taxi driver was right!

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The East German authorities allowed Springsteen to perform because they wanted a release valve for an increasingly frustrated East German youth. Why didn't that work?

Kirschbaum: The East German leadership seemed increasingly worried that they were losing control of the younger generation that was well aware of the Gorbachev-inspired changes and reforms taking place in other Eastern European countries. The East German leaders were willing to jump over their shadows and start doing once-unthinkable things. Allowing in an American rock star to perform for young East Germans would have been utterly unimaginable just a few years before. You have to remember that rock music was long officially frowned upon by the regime in East Germany; it was seen as a decadent American export designed to corrupt young people and seduce them away from Communism. And now, in the eyes of many young East Germans who grew up following that anti-rock party line, the Communist leaders were inviting in one of the world's biggest American rock stars? It was just too strange for many young East Germans.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How important was Springsteen in all this? Do you think the impact would have been the same if Queen, David Bowie or some other mega-act had come to East Berlin at that time?

Kirschbaum: I think it's fair to say that Springsteen is a special case and his special form of rock music and his working-class ethic came across especially well to East Germans. He played for about four hours, and he played his heart out. That's something a lot of the eyewitnesses said again and again. They really felt Springsteen was going all out for them. Even though some said they had trouble hearing all the music because of the poor quality of the sound system -- and because the place was so packed -- everyone there said it was a magical evening.

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